SPOKANE, Wash. – Each year, dozens of crashes happen on Highway 195 between Spokane and Pullman.
New changes being made to the stretch of road are looking to improve the highway and make it safer.
Officials said 661 crashes happened along the highway between 2010 and 2014. Brad Norton grew up near 195 and has seen more wrecks than he can count.
"A lot of the locals, we take the old highway because there's not the traffic and there's not the dangers," Norton said.
After years and years of proposals and planning, work just started on four new passing lanes on 195 between Spangle and Pullman. Out of hundreds of incidents on the highway, a third of them happened because of unsafe passing. Work on the new passing lanes kicked off a week ago. Construction will cost $4 million and everything should be done by August.
In the end, Washington Department of Transportation leaders hope to eventually cut the number of accidents by a third.